A US federal appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that the 650 suspected Taliban and al-Qaida fighters held prisoner in Guantanamo Bay have no right to hearings in American courts.

In a major victory for the Bush administration, the US Court of Appeals in Washington said the inmates are aliens being held outside US sovereign territory, so they are not entitled to constitutional rights like being charged with a crime or having access to a lawyer.

"If the Constitution does not entitle the detainees to due process, and it does not, they cannot invoke the jurisdiction of our courts to test the constitutionality or the legality of restraints on their liberty," the three-judge panel wrote.

The court said its decision applies whether or not the prisoners are considered enemy combatants.

Lawyers representing the families of some of the 650 prisoners being held in Guantanamo had argued that the military base is under the de facto control of the US and that the detainees have legal rights under international law.

The case was brought by the families of 16 foreigners from Australia, Britain and Kuwait being held in Guantanamo. They say the US government is unfairly holding the men indefinitely without charge, leaving them in legal limbo.

In its ruling, the court relied on a Second World War-era case in which 21 Germans detained in China were imprisoned in Germany after being tried by a US military tribunal.

The US Supreme Court ruled in 1950 that the jurisdiction of federal courts did not extend to foreign citizens prosecuted in foreign lands, even if the prosecution was by the United States.